DISD selects Colorado educator as new superintendent

According to a variety of local reports, the DISD board has selected a Colorado Springs school superintendent — Mike Miles, 55 — as the new DISD superintendent, pending a mandatory state waiting period until the final vote in several weeks.

A quick Google search turns up a few links to Miles, a 1978 West Point grad and former Army officer who also graduated from Columbia University in new York and spent a number of years as a foreign diplomat before becoming an educator and administrator. You can watch a rather lengthy and dry webcast featuring Miles (look for him to appear at the 2:20 minute mark). The topic is “systems thinking” and how to use it to increase student achievement.

The DMN report on Miles says he “has been compared with Michelle Rhee, the go-get-em chancellor who has been villainized and lauded as she tries to repair the shattered Washington, D.C. school system.” Rhee, as many of you know, “resigned” her post in D.C. after a mayoral election swept into office a guy who ran on the platform of getting rid of Rhee because of her lightning-rod status in the district after she fired scores of what she called underperforming teachers, reformed the bureaucracy and basically turned the entire apple care over.

People are still debating her accomplishments, or lack thereof, in the Washington school system, but if Miles is anything like Rhee, we’ll be in for an interesting time here in Dallas.